[tei-council] open issues and planning

Fri Jan 19 11:17:53 EST 2007

Syd Bauman wrote:
>
> I do not think the specifications are in any way frozen.
in any way at all? out of 650, are more than 1% still
gelid?
>  In addition
> to those you've mentioned, just this week we have been discussing
> possible significant changes in the <front>, <body>, and <back>
> specifications
those are small details; bug fixes,  really. They don't
affect the descriptions or semantics etc
>  and we will be discussing the revamping of dating
> attributes.
details. You're zapping half a dozen elements,
and will clean up after you. I count that as frozen.
>  There are probably quite a few others, as well.
>   
Sorry, "probably quite a few" isn't good enough.
What others, precisely? if they are recorded
issues unresolved, let's list them, and solve them.
Of course there are always more and more issues
to find if we look hard enough, but the process must
end soon if we are to meet our commitments.

"What commitments", someone will ask?

Well, if you (all) don't think we have a *commitment* to deliver
TEI 5.0 completely ready for use by the TEI MM 2007,
then we ain't singing off the same song sheet.
> Not to mention that neither the editors nor the Council has announced
> that they can be or are frozen.
>   
I didn't imply that. I said *I* regard them as frozen.

I propose a strawman timetable for us:

 1st February: accept no more feature requests for 5.0
 1st March: all Sourceforge bug reports and feature requests from before 
Feb 1 closed or definitely put off for 5.1
 1st April: all implementation resulting from those SF things complete
 1st May: (after council meeting) technical freeze of specs, only 
serious bug fixes allowed after that

I have a feeling you are all going to get fed up with me saying this,
but I feel very strongly that we cannot carry on in "ready when its ready"
mode. We need at least minimal project management here, and that includes
timetables and deadlines.

-- 
Sebastian Rahtz      

Information Manager, Oxford University Computing Services
13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN. Phone +44 1865 283431

OSS Watch: JISC Open Source Advisory Service
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